


Are you the food, No we are the Hunters (the Consequences of Starvation)

by vyoria



Category: Alice Isn't Dead (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, more like i have a theory about Knife Wife aka the villain of this season and it turned into a fic, pining pining pining pining... violent pining, yeah idk it's shippy but not romantic shippy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 09:53:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11228535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vyoria/pseuds/vyoria
Summary: Some chases take longer to resolve than others. This is the longest one she's ever taken and it is what makes it so worth it. Doesn't mean part of her isn't dying for its completion.





	Are you the food, No we are the Hunters (the Consequences of Starvation)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dark_Writer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dark_Writer/gifts).



> hopefully this doesn't suck too hard. And it's super short, sorry about that.  
> Also this is for you Forest, I kept holding onto this little story for so long before publishing it I officially owe it as a gift for you.  
> No beta as usual so go easy on me.

There's something that calls to her, she knows her purpose, understands why the higher-ups sent  _her_ to deal with Keisha, they know what to expect of her services and how she deals with liabilities, possible loose threads.

She expected to like Keisha, in some level, she was  _interesting_ and she meant her words by it. The unexpected, however, lay in the relationship they'd develop along the road. It went beyond the hunting, somewhere along the lines of toying and not taking it seriously enough to let her go, willingly let her go. And hunting again.  
Her interest slowly but surely developing into admiration, longing and the usual hunter that comes when all hunger comes and is associated to her job and her function, her role in society and to her very core.

Yet she started somehow, someway, to submit to the force that pulled them together, the energy that makes Keisha  _hers_ to hunt. To want.   
She'd grown so much too, the road changed her, as roaming alone for as long as she has in America after being tethered for all her life changes anyone. It made steel out of her bones, the highway, iron out of her mind, her anxiety doesn't control her anymore. Her life, as big as the truck she drives, with as little as she can own fitting in the passenger's seat beside her rig. The way the world shapes around her, behind hissing tires and working potent machinery and the skeleton she carries behind her. The weight of Bay and Creek, as a company, as a logo. As the life she submitted to.

But more to the point, Keisha's anxiety doesn't control her steps anymore. Wherein lies the problem. How could  _she_ hope for the same power over Keisha's life, if the horrors she faces everyday along the multitudes of slippery slopes stretches of road inside herself are in many ways far above the ones  _she_ can cause?

No.

That is not where she gets her prey. 

The key element is her own intellect. Panic as raw as panic is, is a powerful tool the Thistle Men always had at their disposal, knowing how to draw it out instead of taking huge bites off of it at every scrape of chance, though, that turns tables. That's the type of horror that gets people insane. Long unfettered panic with short intervals of eerie unnatural silence and a constant roller coaster of adrenaline before the air closes up on itself and she finally  _sees_ blinding as a light among a foggy night, the terror. Undisturbed and blissful, eternal as-long-as-seconds-lasts terror.

A carnivore boat and a village of human feasting psychopaths has nothing on the potential of destruction she alone can cause.

The terrors of the mind, however are ones Keisha faces constantly.

Well then, she'll have to get creative.

*****

Inside the car, sirens off, sliding into the ruined leather seats she catches her breath. Growling softly.

Keisha.

 

It had been a while since their last encounter on the road, she's on a different car now, still police, plain uniform with uncomfortable stitching. Keisha's truck remains the same, Bay n' Creek seems to be pretty relaxed with its employees dress code; she hasn't seen Keisha wearing any kind of company coveralls yet. Her personal tastes never seemed to run too much away from a flannel, doesn't use her handmade dresses anymore.  
She used to love making them. The time she spends driving as well as her living style demands more for pants and rough clothes, less for delicate patterns. She's a fugitive inside her own country, she doubts Keisha has any place or time to make her own clothes anymore.

Hot Topic got a pretty good deal out of her in the long run apparently.  
The flannel suits her though. Obviously they're nothing like her old sundresses but she looks good on them too. Butchier vibe, like the road itself battered Keisha up instead of being simply caught in the crossfire of a supernatural war and suffering its consequences.

She looks good enough to eat.  
She doesn't quite know which way she means it either.

 

The air is stretched thin around her, her jaw aching and muscles taut; tension pooling all around her in the hopes of being translated into movement.  
She wants to.  
She wants to follow her nose, her vision, the gut feeling at the very bottom of herself that accuses Keisha's location somewhere between an empty diner in an almost emptier town and the far stretch of desert distancing them apart. A whole lot of space begging to be crossed for satisfaction sake, she wants to taste the rain and the earth and  _find_ Keisha.

She also wants to drag her steps and take her sweet time, she wants Keisha on edge and deliciously terrified. She wants that tremor of reality when she first sees her and not just  _sees_ her across an expanse of space and distance, not merely watch, not just observe but take in her shape and height, the curls of her hair and the shape where neck meets shoulder, she wants the shiver of fear on Keisha's spine and what's more she wants the shivers of pleasure running down her own.  
She wants and she wants and her own hunger starts to snap its teeth and make itself nuanced in a way it will not be forgotten. Her knuckles made white and steering wheel pulled taut as ramifications of her hunger.

A dull thud coming from the trunk of the police cruiser reminds her that her job is not done yet.

She'll take

her time.

*****

In some misplaced belief that her motives hold any type of benevolence genuinely, Sylvia's daughter seeks her out.

She must have found out someway, by herself or with assistance and after whatever she found she must have assumed _she_ was someone worth trusting. That was a mistake she wouldn't allow Sylvia to make, so she made herself unfindable for a while, let fewer and fewer evidences of her passage through places, focused on sparing more innocent lives than she would've preferred to.  
Still, she left some hints behind, the smallest of breadcrumbs in case  _someone_ was also looking to find her too.

Part of the thrill of hunting is the constant fear of being made prey. Her title of predator, undisputed so far, meant very little when creatures as big as her were in constant demand.  
Now if Keisha would only follow her path, maybe they could make something else worthwhile out of their roles.

 

Keisha follows the script given to her the same way a sheep is willing to be herded through pasture and it is frustrating; exactly like a parent who knows their child holds much more potential than they demonstrate or think to have. Except, of course, Keisha doesn't feel like any daughter of hers, provided she had any.

No, she's something else entirely.

Her potential, both as evidence and a tool of mass destruction was in exactly how she stormed through the Thistle Men, killing their leader and helping Bay and Creek to scatter them through the winds, how suddenly the grief of her Alice shaped into something bigger, a change of insurmountable movement that she traversed, a hunger for her missing wife that pulled her out of her misery and forced the hand of her anxiety to become less than the woman who's desire could very well swallow the world whole.  _Her_ world whole.  
That power, her potential, could be used in ways Keisha's never dreamt of but  _she_ knows; she's old enough to recognize the lingering taste of it in the air around her, the raw intensity that is Keisha's fear. And the powerful catalyzer it is.  
Because she was right. She gets scared every moment of every day and it makes her breathtakingly powerful. Breathtaking and powerful.

 _She_ has been interested since the first moment they assigned Keisha to her and she never wants this chase to end.

There's a storm in the wind and _now_ ,  _now_ , she's rushing to meet it.

*****

 

> "...Even now, free as I am, devoid of attachments with a boxfull of belongings and my sparse human interaction that binds me to my next assignment - by which makes me freer of social norms than most - I still am not free to live my life as I choose".

 Static fills the silver sedan  _she_ lifted from a recently married couple's ownership as Keisha considers her next words between switching gears of the massive truck she drives. She can hear the hiss of the engine falling into steep step.

 

 

>  "We as a society value the concept of freedom too much for a species that made its life dedication to erase it from our daily lives."

  _She_ smiles and thinks  _atta girl_ , stops, muses when exactly did she started feeling as if Keisha was someone she's wanted ownership of her pride.

 

 

>  "...stores equally massive and symmetrical, chains spread throughout the country and the world in an effort to prevent us from choosing whether being somewhere unfamiliar is a good or a bad thing. Prices to make us decide between two singular options because we simply cannot help the money we make to choose a third, pricier and probably more quality product."
> 
> "Our birthright, that prevents us to choose our families. Choices, choices, that we as a group cannot make for the singular fact everything around us that is our responsibility does not leave room for a third better choice when two shitty ones are all we can afford to make. Because someone above our rank already made the call for us and aren't we lucky that we don't get to decide? Can't get indecisive or make the wrong call if you've never been given a third way out."

She's closer to Keisha than she was yesterday; if she focuses away from Keisha's voice for long enough she'll hear the faint hum of the truck's engine and smell the pungent odor of its oils stuck to Keisha's skin. Two day's car ride away, she wagers. Less if she really hits the gas.

 

 

> "...another liberty taken from us and what's worse, this false freedom, we allowed it into our lives with open arms. The first moment our illuminated human philosophy argued for the social contract, because when men are free they commit horrific acts such as murder, freedom becomes chaos and a burden our forefathers made sure to purge from our lives. Fast-forward to America's colonization and here we are. Society based. Glued to one another, chained but they forgot to make us all irons."
> 
> "Well, they did make the irons. For some of us. Others got the right to be called slave owners. Hm, priorities I guess."

There it is, that inapplicable parenthood analogy again.  _She's_ proud as proud can be. Pity Alice had to run away from her wife to try to preserve her.  
She should have fought harder to keep Keisha's diamond rarity untouched by danger and this war they fight. Alice should have kept  _her_ hunger from her.

 

 

> "...So why do we still struggle to aim that chaotic freedom?"

Because now Alice's turn is over.

And  _she_ is hungry.

*****

 And then there is the fact Keisha is right, society made a contract to have its freedom surgically removed so free atrocities such as the Zodiac killer and Jack the Ripper wouldn't repeat themselves.

Problem. There's no erasing humanity's violent compunction to trample over each other. Their economical system is a reflexive aspect of that struggle. Equality and freedom are mutually exclusive and society did repeat itself. The Thistle Men exist, sanctioned by the government, and _she_ is here.

Society made her.

Keisha, she muses, makes her everyday. 

**Author's Note:**

> if you'd like to leave a comment but don't know what to say I accept comments like "this is a secondary kudo", k, thanks bye review pls.


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